


While your Lips are Still Red

by SolanumTuberosum



Series: You Kept Falling in Love (and Then One Day...) [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Fluff and Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-16
Updated: 2012-10-16
Packaged: 2017-11-16 11:42:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/539053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SolanumTuberosum/pseuds/SolanumTuberosum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time he meets her, she's dressed as Barney the Dinosaur.</p><p>That said a lot about her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	While your Lips are Still Red

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SecondStarOnTheLeft](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecondStarOnTheLeft/gifts).



The first time Robb sees her, he’s got ‘werewolf’ makeup slathered across his face and neck, it’s Halloween at Renly’s and she’s dressed in a Barney costume, sitting on a chair that was pulled away from the table, trying to bravely prop her feet up on said table.

In the few seconds he watched her, she managed to knock over a wine glass, topple backwards on her chair and screech a few profanities loud enough to be heard even while still wearing the large purple head of the dinosaur from his imagination.

Loras catches her chair and pushes it back upright before yanking the bizarre costume head off and setting it down beside her. The girl underneath is stunning, even with her golden hair plastered to her head and her skin flushed from the plush helmet she’d just been relieved of.

“Beer me.” She ordered, her red mouth stretching into a grin and he found himself not caring of her age as he passed her a Heineken. “Thanks. Fuck, this thing’s hot!”

Robb sat down beside her, pushing the dinosaur head onto the floor and keeping his mouth shut when the mystery girl decides to use his lap as a foot stool. She smiled just for him then, bright and contagious and he found himself chuckling lightly with a slight shake of his head.

She was _beautiful_.

When Sansa and Willas leave to go home, taking a nurse Margaery with them, and Loras-the-undead-rugby-player goes off in search of Renly, she pulls his mouth to hers and he finds he doesn’t mind her bright lipstick smudged across his face and neck, as long as she’ll keep kissing him like that, even if it is in between pulls off a Marlboro Red.

Renly finds them eventually, her sitting in Robb’s lap in her ridiculous costume and make-up smudged across both of their faces. He just laughs and she throws the head at him and Robb finds out her name’s Myrcella and she’s Robert Baratheon’s daughter, Joffrey-the-bastard-that-needs-to-get-shot-in-the-face-multiple-times-then-kicked-in-the-balls-by-Chuck-Norris’s sister.

Her description was apt, making him smile even as he dragged an unconscious Theon into his car so they could get home.

* * *

The next time Robb meets Myrcella, it’s at a charity ball and the dress code is black and white. She’s stunning in her family colours, wearing a strapless black dress that clings to her figure till her knees, where it flares all the way down to her ankles, occasionally showing glimpses of her elaborate gold heels that match her jewellery.

She smiles brightly when they make eye contact and it lights up her face much better than the polite little quirks of her blood red lips at the various people all vying for her attention. He watches as she excuses herself with all those polished-till-gleaming curtsies and when she inclines her head subtly towards the dance floor, he laughs and bows low, offering her his hand which she gladly takes.

They smile as people stare because they’ve now overtaken Sansa—looking like an ice queen in her pure white dress—and Willas—a stark contrast in a classic black tuxedo—in being the most attractive couple dancing.

While they whirl around the floor, they talk about anything that crosses their minds, meaning Myrcella makes jokes and tells him all the best stories about the people in the room while Robb asks her questions.

By the time they leave to go to the balcony, he knows that she hates these events, tolerating them for her mother’s sake, that she’s been smoking since she was sixteen and she has no wish to stop, that her favourite bands are Misfits and the Runaways and that she wears red lipstick because she used to be paranoid about her lips and when she got over that, it had just become her trademark.

They talk for hours, till Myrcella’s mother, the reviled—not that anyone would ever do anything but show her the utmost respect to her face—Cersei Lannister, came and found them.

Cersei did not laugh, only glared hatefully at Robb and—with a slightly softer expression, less hateful and more angry—ordered her daughter inside so they could leave, the gala being over.

Myrcella grinned and grabbed a fist full of his smokey grey waistcoat, pulling him to her before slanting her lips over his in a quick, though not entirely chaste kiss.

She left him there laughing as she got dragged away by a furious Lannister.

* * *

The third time, it’s in a hospital waiting room because Willas has just gotten into a car crash and no one knows what’s happening. Robb is there with Sansa, who’s white-faced and red-eyed, twisting her engagement ring—something she received on her eighteenth birthday and had been wearing everyday for the past year since—and Myrcella is there comforting Margaery who looks like she struggling to decide whether to cry or scream.

When the doctors and surgeons finally allow the immediate family in to see Willas, though he’s heavily sedated after having shattered most of the bones in his right leg, but thankfully, he’s not paralysed, Robb and Myrcella both leave  to give everyone space.

She smiles slightly more subdued this time, which he can understand, and links her arm through his, waiting till they were a few paces away from the hospital before digging around her—red—bag and fishing out her cigarettes.

“Me and stress don’t get along.” She explains, lighting up with a zippo that has a roaring lion on and ignoring the indignant looks she receives.

“You’re something else, Cella.” She laughs and they keep walking, talking this time about him.

He tells her about Jon, about Arya running away, about his ex-girlfriend Roslin—she laughs at that because ‘you went out with a _Frey_ ’ and even her slight snobbery doesn’t diminish how perfect she is in his eyes.

He ends up asking her out just before his father picks him up and she smiles that lovely, bright smile, kissing his cheek lightly and accepting.

It isn’t until Robb’s dad shakes his head with a thin smile and tells him to wipe the dirt of his face before they pick up Sansa that he realises Myrcella had left her vivid red imprint on him.

* * *

Their date is going clubbing, because, according to Myrcella, it’s an excuse to dress up without having to look perfectly classical—though she might have said something about an opportunity to look as trashy as possible—and also to dance as filthily as possible without actually dry humping.

Those were her exact words and they made Robb choke on his Stella for the second time that night, the first being when she walked in wearing a skin-tight gold dress that glittered in the strobe lights, her heels matching her lipstick.

She orders whiskey and knocks it back before grabbing his hand and tugging him onto the dance floor, blinding smile firmly in place as she wraps one hand around his neck and twists the other in his hair.

When Myrcella says dancing filthily, Robb finds out she very much means it. She grinds against him, shifting her hips in tune with the heavy bass beat, her sinful lips ghosting across his skin, occasionally licking, biting, sucking and kissing as the packed club pulses from the energy of so many sweat-slicked bodies writhing.

After forty five minutes of dancing with occasional breaks for drinks, they’re both flushed and breathing heavily with bright eyes and lazy smiles and Myrcella decides she needs a quick smoke so she pulls him out the back way, into the alley.

Smoking, it seems is the last thing on her mind as she stands up even taller so she can reach his lips, pulling him by his belt loops so he’s pressed firmly against her.

He knows he’s not her first but he can’t find it in himself to care when she’s contracting around him, moaning his name in his ear as she mark him softly with red.

They both laugh when they wake up in the morning in her apartment and see just exactly where she’d managed to stain his skin.

Tommen, Myrcella’s younger brother finds them this time, her lying on her front, back bare while he softly traces patterns on it, both lethargic in the early afternoon sunlight, perfectly content to waste the day.

* * *

“I think I’m in love with you.” Myrcella whispers to him one night as they snuggle on her old couch that’s covered with wool blankets and eclectic pillows. The original sofa is, of course, red but it’s got coffee and food stains everywhere so she covers it up with things she’s found in charity shops.

He laughs and kisses her, knowing that he can’t possible get any more lipstick across his face than he already has.

“I love you too.” Because Robb does and he knows, even if she’s unsure, that she loves him. He also knows that he’d do anything  for her.

Unfortunately, she knows that too, so she makes him give her a foot massage as they settle down to watch Finding Nemo for the billionth-and-one time.

She still laughs at the Dori parts though so he doesn’t mind watching the kid’s movie if it makes her happy.

Sansa finds them asleep on the couch as Robb later discovers because she snapped a picture and showed it to everyone.

Myrcella laughs when she sees it and assures him she doesn’t mind the fact he drools.

He politely reminds her she snores.

* * *

 

When they finally tell their families, it’s four months after he first met her, at a dinner party between the two, where they’re all allowed bring their respective partners.

Robert laughs when Myrcella arrives, announcing that he was sure she was seeing someone and Renly just smiles, knowing more than Robert does about his own kids as usual. Robb opens the door for her, smiling at her red creepers, faded jeans and holey t-shirt that belongs to him.

He brings up her hand and kisses the ring there, a gold band inset with rubies and peridot to match her eyes. No one except Renly and Loras notice because Willas and Sansa are being grilled by Cersei, who looks politely disdainfully at Willas, scorn curling the corners of her mouth as she takes in his cane, Shireen is cheerfully talking to Bran while Stannis and Selyse are glaring at anything that might be making their daughter remotely happy, Robert is chatting loudly with Ned, Joffrey is sulking in the corner, Tommen is laughing away with Arya and her boyfriend Ned Dayne and Catelyn in bravely trying to coax Rickon downstairs.

Renly and Loras immediately engage them in conversation as they enter the living room, Loras going so far as to pick up Myrcella’s hand and examine the engagement ring.

“I get to be part of the wedding right? I’m not fussy, I’ll be flower girl if I have to.” Renly announces, the room going quiet as everyone slowly turns towards them. Robb squeezes Myrcella’s hand because he knows she’s nervous, even though she laughs it off.

“You can be bridesmaid, Uncle. Loras can totally be flower girl. I think a pretty pink dress would look lovely with his hair, don’t you?” She and Renly laugh while Loras snorts indignantly.

“Oh please, Cella, green is much more my colour.”

“Tough. We’ll settle for a nice sky blue and that’s as far as I’m willing to discuss this.”

“Deal.”

“Deal.”

Joffrey ruins the moment though, wiping Myrcella’s smile straight of her face.

“ _You’re_ getting married?” He sneers, walking purposefully towards them like a peacock, jabbing his finger at her. “Why, are you pregnant? Wouldn’t be surprised, slut like—”

“Shut the fuck up, Joffrey. You still bitter at not being wanted?” She snarls back, her back snapping straight so she stands almost as tall as him. His face contorts in anger, his hands balling up into fists and Robb knows what’s coming so he steps in front of the love of his life.

“Don’t _touch_ my fiancée, Joffrey, and never speak to her like that.” He warns, watching as his soon-to-be brother-in-law’s face gets uglier and uglier the angrier he gets. He starts to open his mouth but Robert’s booming voice bounces off the walls.

“Congratulations, Myrcella!” He laughs and turns to Ned. “I guess our families will be joined after all!”

Congratulations echo around the room and Sansa and Catelyn—after finally managing to drag Rickon downstairs—converge to look at the ring.

Robb leaves his future wife’s side then, dragged away by Robert and Renly and all the others that are interested in knowing just how this came about.

When he hears the slap reverberate against the high ceiling and far apart walls, he expects Joffrey to be the one with the red hand-print across his face but instead it’s Myrcella, standing with blood dripping steadily from her nose, Cersei standing so much taller and more intimidating that her daughter, hands still flexing.

Cella mouths ‘sorry’ to him before grabbing her purse and hightailing it, the door slamming shut. He hears her car start up a few seconds later and knows that she just needs to calm down, so he lets her go.

When he hears the screeching of brakes and the loud, raucous noise of metal colliding and tearing quickly followed by people screaming, he feels sick though he races outside with Renly and Loras.

He can see the remnants of her car.

He can hear her.

He can feel his heart breaking as he sprints towards her dying screams.

* * *

The last time Robb sees her, he’s dressed in borrowed clothes, in the hospital morgue and she’s covered with a paper blanket.

He strokes her naturally curly blonde hair and wills her to open her eyes, because he needs her, because she’s perfect and because she’s the only thing that he’s ever loved unconditionally.

She stays perfectly still though, her eyes stay hidden and her mouth doesn’t curve up into that beautiful bright smile that made him fall in love with her.  Her pale pink lips seem downturned almost, from where the glass cut into her face.

He knows he’s crying because he can feel the tears burning and there’s a lump in his throat that prevents him from saying something, anything that might possibly make this alright.

It won’t though, because nothing’s right in a world void of Myrcella.

He presses his face into her chemical smelling neck and weeps.

“It’s time to prepare her, Robb. We have to leave.” Sansa’s gentle voice coaxes him away from his grief, if only long enough for him to wipe his eyes and reach into his pocket for something.

They would put her in a pretty gold and black dress as tradition but he had to add this, for her.

For himself.

He hands Sansa the red lipstick that his dead—that word makes him nearly start crying again because _no no no_ , that wasn’t how it was meant to be—fiancée loved so much and asks her to make sure they use it on her.

She pats his arm and he leaves, to head back to her empty apartment, to fish out the Barney costume that she’d worn on a bet on Halloween night and to drink till all he remembers is her perfect red smile.


End file.
